The heirloom tomatoes at the Union Square Green Market are amazing! Best way to appreciate them is with coarse salt, EVOO and a lil’ cracked pepper. If you got a lil’ mozzarella di bufala, it’s a great combination! Or even a fresh local mozzarella. If you’re really smart and come by Frank Restaurant and have it with out Buratta!
Cut the heirlooms with a very sharp nice so you don’t bruise them and lose the juice on the cutting board. Make sure to cut them THICK so they burst in your mouth! NEVER use a fine salt on tomatoes. Fine salt will dissolve and rob it of sweetness and liquid within a few moments. Coarse salt works wonders. It also adds a nice crunch and SEPARATES the salt from the sweetness of the tomato. It’s just night and day!

In season you should always use fresh tomatoes for everything. Ripe Plum tomatoes make a great passato. Passato di pomodoro is a tomato sauce that has been “passed” through a food mill on the fine whole. A good mill is that funnel shaped metal contraption with a hand crank on top. Also called moulin legume or vegetable mill. It’s great for purées. For real easy blanche tomatoes remove the skin and then “pass” them through the fine hole on the food mill. Add some whole basil and simmer done his is a neutral tomato sauce. I put nothing in it until I know what I am gonna use it for. My other favorite tomato sauce is to use cherry tomatoes. Sear them split in half in medium hot EVOO with garlic and allow them to burst into a sauce. The cherry tomato sauce works amazing with spaghetti and bucatini. In the same cherry tomato sauce you can add capers, rough chopped olives and/or melted anchovies for a quasi “Puttanesca”. Nonna loves puttanesca. When I say “melted anchovies,” I mean you put them in EVOO and slowly crush them with a wooden spoon into the oil while heating slowly. Always use Anchovies packed whole in sea salt. Recca is a good brand. Otherwise the anchovies have already lost their natural texture and are pasty. It’s just commonsense really. Anchovy fillets packed in oil have already lost their texture and flavor so much into the oil. It’s night and day. The reason being there is nothing to protect them. Whole packed in salt have the natural fish skin 2 keep the flesh from bleeding out flavor.